


Snow Drifting

by orphan_account



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Adventure, F/F, Romance, Supernatural Elements, supernatural encounters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-07-07
Packaged: 2018-04-05 12:32:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4179987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The dimwit squad's untold adventures during their return trip to Silas just after the encounter with Leif the Kobold. A mysterious motel, Inception starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and a magical minimart all appear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cuddly movie night with loopy Laura calls for snacks.

Somehow, Perry had managed to find a motel within a day’s walk of the Silas campus. In the midst of all the pitchfork dodging and Laura rescuing, the odd little building had appeared out of nowhere in the middle of their path. Not even Carmilla was complaining about a night in a bed rather than a pile of hay despite the strangeness of finding a hotel not mentioned on any map or website. 

They had checked into one of the hotel’s suites--for a suspiciously low fee--with the glassy-eyed clerk at the front desk. Perry and LaFontaine had promised that they had definitely not given said clerk any sort of alchemical compound that made the taker more susceptible to the suggestion that their stay cost no more than a cheap mini fridge. Carmilla had shrugged it off, indifferent as to what trickery was involved in finding shelter for the night, and a still-hypoxic Laura had trotted, literally, down the hallway without giving their shenanigans a second thought. Laura had collapsed happily on one of the beds; she and Carmilla were now snuggled together under the supernaturally soft blanket. Perry and LaFontaine had spent an hour scrolling through the TV channels before deciding that Inception offered the most opportunity for running color commentary. 

“This doesn’t make any sense. Dreams don’t work like that.” Perry’s accusatory tone implied LaFontaine had been responsible for the scientific research behind the script. 

“Technically, you can’t prove that,” they replied, lifting their head briefly from Perry’s’ shoulder. 

“Maybe you’re asleep right now,” Carmilla chimed in, annoyed at the lack of privacy but never one to pass up an opportunity to taunt one of Laura’s redheaded friends. 

“I wish I was asleep right now...” Laura muttered into Carmilla’s hair. She had trapped Carmilla’s right arm so that it was loosely circled around her neck and shoulders, pale fingers trailing up and down her arm. The vampire’s gaze fixated on the rise and fall of the slow rise and fall of her girlfriend’s chest. 

“Oh my gosh! Did you see that?” LaFontaine yelled out as a foghorn-like boom filled the room. Carmilla glanced up to see a flower shop exploding, plants and glass and water freezing in midair. 

Laura jumped at the sound. “What? What was that?!”

“Shh, cupcake, just the movie,” Carmilla replied softly. 

“Is something here?” Laura whispered, her altitude-crazed eyes boring into Carmilla’s own. 

“Just us.” 

“Oh, really?” Laura said slyly, shifting so that she was half on top of Carmilla. “Well then, I’m very glad you found a bed.”

“Actually, LaFontaine found it.” 

Laura’s heart sank as she returned to her former position next to rather than on top of her girlfriend. “Oh.”

“Sorry to kill the mood, sweetheart. ‘Just us’ includes some company.” 

“Holy--Perr, did you see that?!” LaFontaine exclaimed. 

“Well, they certainly spared no expense on explosions,” Perry remarked. 

LaFontaine grinned at the screen more than a bit manically. 

Carmilla was distracted from the explosions on screen by arms wrapping around her waist as Laura nuzzled into her side. At least she was safe, even if she was still suffering from the effects of altitude sickness. Being rather petite and prone to overexertion, she was affected more than the taller and more undead members of the group. 

“Laura,” Carmilla said quietly. 

“Shh, I’m asleep, Carm,” Laura said back. 

Carmilla sighed. “Laura, please wake up.” 

“What?” She sounded a little more serious, a little more like herself. 

“Have you eaten recently?” 

Laura playfully nipped at Carmilla’s shoulder, looking over at her with a mouthful of dark hair. 

Carmilla rolled her eyes and reached for the room phone to her left, dialing the front desk. After three rings she heard the clerk’s monotone voice. 

“Can I be of assistance to you in any way, Countess Karnstein?” 

“Uh,” Carmilla started, “I’m sorry, have we met?”

“Extra mints?” 

“No, no. Nevermind. Room service.” 

“What in your room requires servicing?”

“My girlfriend’s stomach,” Carmilla spat back as Laura rolled away from her and face down into a pillow. 

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” the clerk replied. 

Carmilla hung up, scoffing at the incompetent clerk. 

“Laura, is take out okay with you?” She said, turning to the happy bundle that had quickly been engulfed by a pillow. 

“Only if I can come with you,” Laura said as sternly as she could, resting on her cheek so she could see Carmilla better. 

“I don’t think so.” 

“Then I don’t want takeout,” Laura pouted. 

“Laura, you have to eat.”

“So do you!” Laura half-yelled.

“Shhh!” Perry exclaimed, suddenly very much invested in the movie. 

“Yeah, guys, keep it down.” LaFontaine added.

Carmilla sighed. She couldn’t leave Laura here to pester the gingers. They deserved a little time away from her girlfriend’s endless antics. 

“Let’s go, Laura,” Carmilla said, dragging Laura up off the bed by pulling on one arm. 

“Caaarm, my aaarm,” Laura complained. A moment later she broke into a fit of giggles. 

Somehow, Carmilla managed to keep Laura from falling asleep against the hotel walls. When they made it to the lobby, a new clerk was sitting behind the front desk. He was staring into Carmilla. 

He titled his head at a rather unnatural angle. “How may I be of assistance, Miss Karnstein?” 

“Uh, where can I get food around here?” 

“There’s a blood bank just around the block. Convenience is everything.”

Laura piped up next to Carmilla, her eyes wide. “Carm, I think he knows you’re a vampire!” 

Carmilla put a hand on Laura’s shoulder to steady her without turning away from the clerk. “Listen,” she started, leaning forward just slightly, “whoever you’re working for, they don’t scare me.” 

“Why, ma’am, I work for the customer. Satisfaction is key.” 

Carmilla released Laura’s shoulder and grabbed the clerk by his collar. His lips spread into a smooth smile. If he was at all afraid of Carmilla, he showed no physiological symptoms of fear. His heart beat was steady. No sweat. No increased blood flow. His pupils--his pupils were dilated. That didn’t follow. 

“Why..?” Carmilla whispered to herself.

“If the customer is happy, we are happy,” the clerk responded mechanically. 

Carmillla threw him back from the counter and took Laura by the waist, escorting her out the front door while holding eye contact with the clerk. He smiled as they walked out. 

It was freezing, and not in any hyperbolic sense. In fact, it was well below freezing. Carmilla could feel the skin of her lips cracking already, but she ignored her own mild discomfort. Laura was wearing a coat, but she was in no state to be facing extreme weather again so soon. 

“Cupcake,” Carmilla said, wrapping her arms around Laura, “you’ll freeze out here.” 

“Good thing I have you to hold onto,” Laura said, huddling into Carmilla’s chest. 

Carmilla unwound Laura’s arms from her waist, taking a hand in hers and walking towards the twenty-four hour gas station visible from their hotel.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Magical gas stations aren't the best idea for late night food runs.

The street in front of the gas station was completely empty. The only light in the vicinity emanated from the SuperKwik’s fading neon sign. 

“Carm, I don’t like this place,” Laura whined. 

“Got a better idea?” Carmilla turned around and raised an eyebrow, failing to hide her increasing impatience with Laura’s state. 

“Fine, but it’s creepy.” She gripped Carmilla’s hand tighter, glancing down at their freezing fingers. “Do you mind?”

Carmilla smiled back and shook her head a little before pushing the door open. A little jingle welcomed them to the small space. Most of the mini mart was filled with shelves lined with junk food and snacks, just like a normal gas station. The drinks section, however, included a designated blood cooler. The anomalous scent hit Carmilla a second after the door closed behind them. 

“Snacks!” Laura yipped excitedly, dragging Carmilla away from the door by the hand. She followed, but her attention and gaze remained focused on the locked metal cooler door. 

“How much money do we have?” Laura asked, fishing through her pockets and coming up empty handed. 

“Don’t worry about it, cupcake,” Carmilla said absentmindedly. 

Laura’s face brightened: she had just been given carte blanche in a store filled with processed sugar products. She dropped Carmilla’s hand and started gathering cookies, chocolate, cereal, crackers, anything she could fit in her arms. 

Carmilla glanced at Laura once to see her prancing about the aisles and then zipped over to the fridge at the speed of sound. The smell that promised sustenance invited her to tear the lock off the door. She grabbed the padlock and felt a searing in her palm, hissing and stepping back into an offensive fighting stance. 

“Can I help you?” 

Carmilla whirled to her left to see a gremlin of a man. He wore a spattered white apron like a butcher might. In his left hand he held up an iron key. His strained, high voice sounded like he had inhaled an entire tank of helium. 

“Can’t have thievery here.” He waved the key in front of Carmilla’s face. “And blood doesn’t come cheap.” 

“I’ve got money.” The vampire glared at him. 

“Oh, you do, you do, I’m sure,” he muttered, reaching with his disproportionately long arms to remove the cursed padlock. He inserted the key, but before opening the door he looked back up at Carmilla with a treacherous glint in his eye. “This station runs on a system of trade.” He swung the door open, watching Carmilla clench her jaw. 

“What do you want?” She stared at the racks of blood, each labeled by type and Rh factor. 

“A fair trade, of course,” the gnomish creature replied. “Four gallons for four gallons.” 

“Four gallons of what?” Carmilla narrowed her eyes at him. 

A grin stretched his face to gruesome proportions, his greenish lips leathery.

“I can’t give you blood.” 

“Why else bring a human along?” 

Carmilla glanced down at the gremlin’s bloodstained apron, betraying none of the panic that had hit her. “How do I know I’m getting a fair trade if I don’t sample the product?” 

Before he could protest, she grabbed an IV bag full of O negative from the back of the shelf and sank her fangs into a corner of the bag. Her tongue traced the inside of her lips before she kicked the little man, sending him across the store and into the back room. 

Carmilla snagged two more bags from the cooler and sprinted to Laura’s side. She had apparently been oblivious to the altercation on the other side of the store. 

“We have to go,” Carmilla said, taking snacks piled in Laura’s arms and stuffing them into the pockets of her winter coat. 

“But we have to pay for those!” 

“No we don’t.” Carmilla grabbed Laura’s hand and tried to drag her out of the aisle, but she was being stubbornly moral. The vampire threw the human over her shoulder, causing her to drop several snack cake packages. 

The gremlin stood in front of the door with the iron key in his hand, sneering and bleeding green from his malformed mouth. Carmilla huffed and barreled towards him, leaping over him and turning mid-air so that her back crashed through the glass of one of the doors. She cradled Laura as carefully as she could. The gremlin, however, saw the jump coming and brought the key up to shank the back of Carmilla’s calf. 

They landed by one of the filling stations in a ball of tangled limbs. 

“What the hell, Carm?” Laura screeched as she stood up. 

“He wanted to trade you for blood,” Carmilla pulled her by the arm, wincing at the pain in her own leg. “Now can we run?” 

Laura’s expression changed from surprise to fear in a fraction of a second. She took Carmilla’s hand and ran, glancing back over her shoulder for a moment to see the gremlin seething by the entrance to the mini mart.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Perry is unusually good at patching up the wounded.   
> More fluff soon.

The clerk was absent from the lobby upon their return, much to Carmilla’s relief. When they made it back to the room, Laura bolted the door and pulled a chair over to block the door handle. Carmilla limped into the room. 

“Uh, hey, guys,” LaFontaine said upon noticing Laura’s panicked demeanor. 

“Carmilla? Are you--” 

Perry was interrupted as Carmilla fell forward onto the bed, catching herself on her forearms as her knees buckled. Laura rushed over, throwing her jacket off as she helped Carmilla up. 

“It’s fine. Bad landing.” Carmilla’s voice was raspier than usual. 

“You’re bleeding,” Laura said, flailing her hands by her chest. “Guys, help.” 

LaFontaine got up and helped Laura pick Carmilla off the ground, each taking her under an arm. Perry rushed over to her bag of first aid supplied, which she had insisted on taking before they left Silas. 

“Can you roll up your pants?” Perry asked, holding a cloth dabbed with a silvery liquid. 

“Hmm?” Carmilla blinked heavily. 

“She can’t have lost that much blood,” LaFontaine said, their brow furrowed. 

“Carmilla,” Laura said, trying to sound calm and failing abysmally, “I’m taking your pants off, okay?” 

She muttered back something crass about how that was always fine with her. 

Laura leaned close to unbutton the tight leather pants. How the blunt key had broken through the thick material, she had no idea. It was the first logical progression of thought she had had in a while.

“There’s something weird about this,” Laura muttered next to Carmilla’s ear. 

“What’d you say, L?” LaFontaine leaned down to hear better. 

“Something’s wrong,” Laura reiterated. 

“I’ll say. Your vampire girlfriend’s bleeding. What happened?” 

“I--wasn’t really paying attention,” Laura admitted. “There was this creepy little green...gremlin guy and he tried to keep us from leaving the gas station because apparently he wanted Carm to trade me for blood so she broke his window and must have cut herself on the glass or something.”

“All for a couple of snackcakes?” LaFontaine laughed, less sensitive to the gravity of the situation than their best friend. 

Perry had folded the silver-dipped cloth carefully and was preparing to apply it to the wound on Carmilla’s calf. 

“Carmilla,” Perry said in her most serious EMT voice, “this might--well it shouldn’t hurt, per se, but try not to move.” 

“Nnnuuuhhhh,” was all Carmilla managed to reply. 

“This is ridiculous,” Laura said. 

“Thought you were the one who’d gone all loopy.” LaFontaine had taken a seat on the bed next to Carmilla, holding her leg at a rather unnatural angle so that Perry could reach the back of the calf. 

Perry’s face was scrunched in anticipation, but she didn’t look away from her patient for a moment as she pressed the cloth to the bloody gash. 

Carmilla inhaled sharply. The cloth was cool--freezing actually, colder than the air outside the hotel, like a chunk of solid dry ice was stuck inside the muscle. She emitted another groan when the solution suddenly turned hot inside her. She could feel the silvery liquid spread through her veins faster than blood could run, swirling into every capillary and pooling in her fingers and toes. She felt something warm touch her hand and opened her eyes, which she hadn’t realized had been closed. Laura was staring at the vampire’s now bruising calf, but her hand had found its way to Carmilla’s. 

“Shouldn’t she be healing?” Laura’s voice was rising in pitch. “Perry, what did you put--”

“It’s just an antiseptic.” Perry rushed to cut her off. “LaFontaine, go get some gauze from the bathroom.” 

“Yes, doctor.” Normally, Laura would have appreciated LaFontaine’s levity, but right now she was mildly terrified by what had happened back at the gas station. 

“...Carm?” Laura’s voice was small. “Can you hear me?” 

Carmilla nodded, her eyes closed again, and squeezed the sweaty hand in hers. Laura took solace in the sensation and steeled herself, her head clearer than it had been in a week.

“What happened?” Laura asked. 

“Groucho stabbed me with his stupid iron key,” Carmilla managed between grunts and small convulsions. 

“It must have been cursed,” Laura offered.

“That would explain the bruising,” Perry added. “This should take care of any internal bleeding.”

“Perry,” Laura said cautiously, “why do you know how to treat cursed wounds?” 

“Floor don training at Silas is rather thorough,” Perry replied. “Actually, we’re all certified in CPR, epipen administration, and basic witchcraft.” 

“Witchcraft?!” Laura hollered loudly enough that LaFontaine popped their head out of the bathroom to check in. 

“Perr, I don’t see any gauze in here.” 

“Maybe a cabinet,” Perry called back. 

LaFontaine turned around and checked again, slightly startled by the appearance of a small first aid cabinet under the sink. “I could swear that wasn’t there before.” 

“What’s that? Did you find it?” Perry’s question acted as a summons for LaFontaine to return to the room, a small roll of gauze in their hand. 

“Uh, yeah,” they said. “Perr, what’s--”

“Laura, lift her leg up so I can wrap it.” 

Laura obliged. When Perry had wrapped Carmilla’s lower leg from just below the knee to the top of her ankle, she handed the roll of gauze back to LaFontaine. When they tried to put it back in the bathroom cabinet, it was gone. 

“Okay. This is definitely weird.” LaFontaine said to themself before reentering the room with the gauze still in hand. “You just want to hold onto this?” 

Perry exhaled in frustration and snatched the gauze from LaFontaine’s hand, hurrying around the corner to the bathroom. LaFontaine peeked their head around the door just in time to see Perry close the door on a cabinet floating in mid-air. The next second the miniature cabinet poofed out of existence, leaving LaFontaine gaping. Perry turned to them with wide eyes and shouldered them out of the doorway.


End file.
